The Tempered Radical

Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading

As a ridiculous reader, I've churned through literally hundreds of titles in the past five or six years, and while all have changed who I am as a teacher, none has been more practical than Deeper Reading by Kelly Gallagher.  In Deeper Reading, Gallagher---a high school English teacher working in a high poverty school in California---details a collection of ready-to-use strategies for structuring pre, during and post reading activities in the middle and high school classroom.

I've purchased countless copies of Deeper Reading to hand out to colleagues, have recommended it as a title for faculty book studies, and spent so much time with my own copy that it is a dog-eared mess.  Heck, I'm even willing to admit that much of what I know about teaching students to read comes from Deeper Reading---which embarrasses me, considering that I didn't buy my first copy until I was about 10 years into my career. 

That's why I was left a bit slack-jawed the other day when Stenhouse---Gallagher's publisher---contacted me the other day and asked me to host their first ever blog book tour stop for Gallagher's new book Readicide:  How schools are killing reading and what you can do about it. 

I spent the past few days trying to nail down a few details and am excited to announce that readers of the Radical will have a few unique opportunities in the next three weeks.  First, a live link to the complete text of Readicide will be made available here on the Radical on January 14th.  Your eyes will be among the first to read Gallagher's provocative arguments---backed with research-based evidence---that our nation's emphasis on standardized testing has actually harmed readers and that teachers must take the lead in driving change.

Then, Gallagher will answer your questions---about the concept of Readicide, about teaching reading to middle and high schoolers, about responsible actions that teachers can take to reinvent reading instruction in their classrooms---here on the Radical on January 22nd.  Who'd've thunk that one of my favorite authors would actually be able to interact with my audience directly? 

Very cool, indeed.

So if you're interested in having free access to a book that is sure to leave you thinking, mark your calendars for January 14th.  Then, set aside a bit of time to read and reflect on Gallagher's arguments and to churn up a few questions for Kelly.  Let's pick his brain a bit, huh?  If we work hard, we'll end up with a pretty convincing set of arguments that we can use to advocate for meaningful instruction in our own schools. 

In the meantime, you can expect to see a review of Readicide here on the Radical before the end of the week---I finished my copy yesterday---and a Q+A with Gallagher sometime next week.  I'm sending him a few prompts to spark a bit of conversation later today. 

Oh yeah---and spread the word!  You've got to know some reading teachers, don't you?

We're ALL reading teachers, aren't we!

(Image Credit:  Read or Listen by Suchitra, licensed Creative Commons: Attribution)

A Lesson in Giving. . .

I woke up the other morning feeling pretty good about 2008.  From signing my first book contract and being published in several important education journals to being hired as a professional learning communities consultant/associate by Solution Tree, my life has been professionally rewarding.

So I wanted to find a way to give as much as I've gained.  Like most teachers, I'm a pretty socially aware guy always looking to make contributions to the world---and taking action this year just made sense.  My struggle was finding the right way to give back.  While I love working in my community, there just seems to be far greater challenges outside of my corner of the world that needed attention. 

That's when I stumbled onto this Karl Fisch blog post, detailing an open, collective effort on the part of edubloggers to drive change in the world called Team Shift Happens.  Working through Kiva---an organization dedicated to ending world poverty by connecting interested people in the developed world with entrepreneurs in need of microloans to start businesses in the developing world---Team Shift Happens has already loaned out over $1,800 to citizens of dozens of countries around the globe. 

After poking around the Kiva website for about 20 minutes, I was hooked.  Being a social studies teacher who covers Eastern Europe and South America with students every year, I understand the income disparities that  plague residents of our world's poorest countries.  Honestly, it's one of the greatest geopolitical challenges of our time---and the root of many of the conflicts that we'll wrestle with throughout the 21st Century. 

To be able to help by spreading my wealth around----with no offense to Joe the Plumber---just plain feels right. 

So I made a $100 microloan to a group of women in Bolivia working to start several small businesses.  Some are interested in making and selling baked goods and groceries.  Others are working as domestic servants or in public transportation.  All are committed to one another and to bettering their communities.  And all are committed to paying back the $4,675 dollars loaned to them by 144 people in 20 different countries ranging from the United States and Canada to Italy, Switzerland, Romania and Korea.

How amazing is that?  144 people from different corners of the globe who have never met one another have come together to help 16 women in Bolivia change their lives---and the lives of their families and communities.

For me, this lesson in giving is one that I'll carry back to my classroom.

Using Spreadsheets and Pivot Tables to Track Data. . .

So I've decided to give the Radical Nation their Christmas present a bit early this year---and it's a home-made gem that you might just find to be your favorite gift under the tree.  Here it is:

Download Sample_Spreadsheet

Now, I know what you're thinking:  "This guy is giving us an Excel spreadsheet for Christmas and he wants us to be happy about it?  Why didn't he just bust out a few hundred digital fruitcakes?"

Before you jump to any conclusions about the worthiness--or worthlessness---of my offering, though, be sure to give this spreadsheet a good once over.  What you'll find is that it's a pretty complex little data management document that you might just be able to take real advantage of.  I know my colleagues are pretty jazzed about the whole thing.  In fact, it's the first holiday gift that I ever truly made them happy with.

Here's how it works:  On our learning team, we were looking for a way to track individual student performance at the reading skill level.  That means we wanted to be able to quickly identify the students that we serve who struggled with author's purpose or main idea questions.  We wanted to know who needed extra help with summarizing or vocabulary.  And we wanted sorting these students to be easy.

More on Performance Pay. . .

A digital colleague that I admire and respect greatly is Clay Burell, who blogs over at Beyond School.  In response to my recent post about Bill Gates and Merit Pay, Clay wrote:

I had a conversation last week about merit pay, and why I didn't believe in it. I said it pissed me off to no end that I _knew_ from all sorts of objective observations that I worked harder and more successfully than many of my colleagues, yet earned nothing more for it - BUT, until a system was implemented that could determine what we mean by 'merit,' and avoid causing all of us to teach to tests and thus damage student learning, I was still against it.

What's the best solution to this dilemma that you've thought or read?

This is good stuff, Clay.  The thought that a teacher should embrace performance pay only when the system designed supports responsible teaching really resonates with me.  I've written more than once about how my teaching has changed in response to today's accountability culture and it ain't pretty.  Supporting alternative compensation models in any system that didn't consider the consequences that new performance measures have on teaching and learning would be unethical, wouldn't it.

As far as the best solutions go, I think that Denver's got it right.  Working with district leaders, Denver's teacher union developed a system of compensation that is far more complex than most of the solutions that are proposed today.  Called ProComp, Denver's plan rewards teachers differently for earning professional development units that support the district's mission and vision, for working in hard to serve schools or hard to staff assignments, for producing results on standardized tests, and for earning satisfactory ratings on evaluations. 

What I like the most about Denver's plan, though, is that teachers have the opportunity to earn additional compensation for meeting two "student growth objectives."  These are measurable learning targets that teachers write on their own in conjunction with their building leaders.  Then, during the course of the school year, teachers collect evidence demonstrating whether or not students have achieved the goals that teachers set out to reach. 

Simple yet powerful, huh?  Reward teachers for systematically reflecting on their practice.  Those are the kinds of behaviors we want to see from every teacher, so let's incentivize them.

What I also like about Denver's plan is that teachers have clear avenues for increasing their salaries.  If I'm a young educator who has a passion for earning more, I can decide to go and work in a hard to serve school and add to my compensation.  Likewise, if I'm a new father who is swamped with day to day life as it is, I can cycle out and work in a less demanding school for a few years. 

Think about the flexibility that the district builds for itself with Procomp.  Today's hard to staff subject or hard to serve school is unlikely to be tomorrow's, right?  With Procomp, Denver can choose what it wants to incentivize and make changes over time.  Doing that with professional development units and credits makes even more sense.  The kinds of knowledge and skills that teachers need to be successful today are going to be far different from the kinds of knowledge and skills that teachers are going to need to be successful tomorrow----so why not take a shorter term view of how we differentiate salaries and stipends for continuing education?

Does any of this make sense?

I guess what I'm saying is a successful compensation plan has to be flexible for both teachers and taxpayers.  Teachers should be able to make concious choices that can increase their salary---working in incentivized buildings, taking incentivized professional development, collecting data in a systematic way that documents their impact----and districts should be able to conciously decide the kinds of things that they most want to incentivize in their district.

Today's compensation systems---based on years of experience and master's degrees---just plain lack the ability to respond to changing realities. 

Where Gates Gets it Right on Education. . .

First, many apologies for slogging this week.  I usually only slack off over here on the Radical when school is a complete zoo---and the weeks leading up to the holiday break definitely qualify as high-pressure times for any teacher.  I just couldn't find any free minutes to write!

I did find time, though, to read this interesting Newsweek interview between Jonathan Alter and Bill Gates on the best ways to reform education.  What surprised (impressed?) me the most was that ol' rich Billy is using some of his considerable clout to push for changes that I think I can believe in.  Most interesting is Gates' insistence on reforming how teachers are rewarded for their work.

As Alter describes it:   

Betraying his own professional background, Gates shakes his head in dismay at the idea of secondary schools and colleges trying to function at all without simple software that offers them basic statistical information about how students and teachers are performing over time (for-profit colleges are an exception). Everyone in education knows why: unions have simply prevented teachers from being judged, even in part, on whether their students improve during the course of the year. It's no surprise that Gates is a believer in merit pay and incentive pay and has little use for teachers colleges as presently constituted because there's no evidence that having a master's degree improves teacher performance. You never hear Gates or his people talk about highly qualified teachers, only highly effective ones.

I couldn't agree with Gates more.  Our commitment as a profession to master's degrees as a form of identifying--and then differentiating pay for---accomplished teachers has simply outlived its usefulness.  While there may have been a time when elevating the academic accomplishments of classroom teachers served to elevate the profession in the eyes of critics and to elevate the qualifications of those who'd chosen to spend their careers in the classrooms, differentiating pay for master's degrees at this point is an inefficient and under-informed practice.

Let me give you an example (which I've mentioned on the Radical before):  My master's degree is in "advanced teaching techniques."  I earned it in 1997.  Do you think that the strategies I learned from college professors who hadn't been in classrooms since the early '80s in 1997 would still qualify as "advanced teaching today?"

I sure don't. 

Yet I'll continue to collect a 10% salary supplement from my state---one of the only ways teachers can differentiate their pay here in North Carolina---for the remaining 14 years in my career.  As a classroom teacher scraping nickels together to adopt a child, I'm thankful.  As a fiscally conservative taxpayer, though, I'm miffed!

Reflecting on Teacher Working Conditions

A few weeks ago, I had an interesting opportunity to speak to a group of aspiring principals about the role that quality teacher working conditions can play in school improvement---something North Carolina has been studying for years. 

Considering my "just a teacher" status, I figured that I'd be fighting an uphill battle to convince these future leaders that teacher working conditions were worth embracing, but the evening was such a success that the professor asked me to answer a few general follow-up questions so that he could use my responses in future work with students.   

Here are his questions and my replies.  I hope that you'll find them useful in your work to draw attention to the important role that teacher working conditions can play in improving our schools:

What does it mean to say that "teacher working conditions are student learning conditions?"  Is this true?

I've always loved this slogan--coined by North Carolina Governor Mike Easley---because it's one of the best bits of public relations that you can find in the Ed Policy world, don't you think?  After all, who really cares about teacher working conditions if  they're not connected to student learning!  Building support for improved teacher working conditions requires direct public connections to student learning.

And the good news is that years of study have proven clear links between quality teacher working conditions and successful students as measured by Annual Yearly Progress and ABC---a North Carolina measure of effectiveness---scores.  To simplify the findings of working conditions surveys conducted in 8 different states over the past eight years into one statement, students in schools with quality working conditions regularly outperform students in schools with poor working conditions.

I'd argue that these findings shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. 

After all, schools with quailty working conditions are ALWAYS going to recruit and retain the best teachers.  Focusing on providing teachers with the time, tools and resources---including quality leadership, professional development, and flexibility---that they need in order to be successful ensures that schools will have the human capital necessary to reach every child. 

Blogging = Influence

Kurt, a new reader who writes over at the Wizards Teaching Blog, was caught by my recent post on why educators should blog.  He writes:

It is worthwhile because you are getting your ideas out to the small group, and offering your opinions up for discussion. It is the discussion that is the valuable part of a blog. Your ideas are challenged, and refined. Possibly changed. But whatever happens, your original idea is subjected to the scrutiny of others who often have the same objective as you do - becoming a better teacher. That is really the reason you should blog as a teacher.

Here's another interesting twist, Kurt: Blogging can allow teachers to enter their voice into important conversations about teaching and learning.

All too often, teachers are left on the sidelines when it comes to making decisions about what is right for students and schools. While leaving us out is not always intentional---we are, after all, locked up with kids while the majority of these decisions are being made---it's harmful because we know more about key situations and realities than anyone else.

Decisions made without us are unintentionally underinformed!

With more and more educators blogging, however, our "voice" can be heard from any location----and the followers that you pick up become more informed because you've worked to make your thinking and your current reality transparent.

It takes time and effort, but blogging = influence....and that's something we've rarely had.

Is this a "blogging motivation" for anyone besides me? 

The Importance of a Clear Vision. . .

By now, you've probably figured out that I do a ton of reading and writing about professional learning communities. 

It's an idea that I've embraced as a powerful tool for change simply because I've seen the impact that my own learning team has had on my personal development as an educator.  And recently, I've been doing a ton of writing about the importance of having solid mission and vision statements to guide the direction of professional learning communities. 

I just heard your collective groan---but I completely understand your pain:  After all, mission and vision statements are usually about as effective as the crank pencil sharpener hanging off the wall in the back of your classroom, aren't they. If you're lucky, you get you a serious point on your Ticonderoga #2 with a few quick turns of the nifty little nickel plated handle, but most of the time you grind away without getting anywhere quick. 

What's crazy is that when well designed and implemented, mission and vision statements can bring a clarity to decision-making that makes everyone's work easier.  In fact, DuFour and Eaker go as far as to argue that every decision in a building ought to be held up against a school's mission and vision before being implemented.  They write:

When educators have a clear sense of purpose, direction and the ideal future state of their school, they are better able to understand their ongoing roles within the school.  This clarity simplifies the decision making process and empowers all members of the staff to act with greater confidence.  Rather than constantly checking with their bosses for approval, employees can simply ask, "Is this decision or action in line with the vision?"  and then act on their own. 

(DuFour & Eaker, p. 84)

Think about how powerful a school working from this position would be.  There'd be no disagreements  because every decision would be aligned with a shared vision of what the purpose of a school should be.  No one would struggle to "see eye to eye" because everyone would be looking out of the same set of lenses!

Why Educators Should Blog. . .

Things are flying around here today so I don't have a ton of time to craft a beautiful treatise on the state of education or the passions of a teacher leader, but I did want to spend a few minutes answering a question that Jeremy Wang asked over at his new blog:

I’m slowly trying to cull my way through education blogosphere, and have found some gems here and there (the current Edublog nominations v2008 are helping). Some are making me nostalgic for teaching, others are going to re-awaken teaching nightmares. My Google Reader Ed folder is fat with feeds, and I’m trying to figure out if there’s room for me.

Here's my advice to any new edublogger:  Blogging should be a selfish pursuit.

You should do it because you want to articulate your thinking and make your ideas transparent to a growing community of critics who can force you to rethink and revise. You should do it because you want to connect your thinking to the thinking of others and create new notions together. You should do it because you want to learn—and because you know that learning requires interaction.

If those core beliefs resonate with you, then fire it up!

Otherwise, lay down the digital pen and save yourself some frustration.

Ask yourself a simple question: If you never earned anything more than a small following of readers who were willing to jump into conversations every now and then—but they jumped in with fervor and brilliance—would the time you spend writing be worth it?

That’ll let you know whether blogging is for you.

(Image credit:  FattyMattyBrewing by FattyMatty, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)